To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
BARBARA TUCHMANTheology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
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Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
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Human behavior is timeless.
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Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
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If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
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Completeness is rare in history.
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
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For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
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The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN